with a graveyard tan carrying a cross

Feel free to put it wherever you need to in your timelines. I only keep loose ones, so I'm OK with it. :3

His venture back from meeting with Verrine had taken a bit of a detour. Perhaps it was out of nostalgia already, but Mordecai hadn't graced the overgrown woods for quite some time. He thought that maybe the last time he had come through had been his final departure from Silvertip. The first time had brought him into a meeting with Jinx. In many ways, the woodland was the start of many of his adventures in the Wilds.

Though sunset was heavily upon the terrain when he had first reached the cover of the woods, the canopies above soon blocked out any sort of twilight. A late summer haze blanketed the way before him, but Mordecai moved through it ease and without care. The terrain even after all that time was still familiar to him, and he wondered if the game had repopulated itself in the absence of them hunting from the mountains.

But the thought passed through his mind in favor for a curious scent on the faint breeze. It was of the sea, full of the bracken and watery tinge that he recalled from Verrine. Mordecai's pace slowed as he tested the air thoroughly, though all he could ascertain was that it belonged to no one he knew. Certainly not Verrine, who had gone back to the coast to be with his mate. Someone else, but who? He exhaled, soundly, and allowed curiosity take the better of him as he chose to suss them out.